Google Smartphone – No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag

  • Resolved Trish

    (@trible)


    2 years, 8 months ago

    What has Rank Math done to my site… and how do I fix it?

    Recently changed my SEO plugin to Rank Math in hope of improving my site’s performance in Mobile devices.

    It improved the speed of loading the pages… BUT… now I’m having issues that I’ve NEVER seen on this site ever.

    Googlebot smartphone was allowed to crawl and the page was successful… but —> “No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag”, which is being reported from 2 referring pages.

    The previous site sitemaps used, allowed users to list the posts/pages to NOT appear on the sitemap, and I do not see that option available in Rank Math.

    PLUS, now there are 2 sitemaps that Google Analytics is showing:
    sitemap.xml
    sitemap_index.xml

    When I went to the page in question, and check the code, I could clearly see Rank Math codes stating No Index… but I do not understand what it is referring to, nor do I understand how to fix this.

    Can you please help?

    Thank you in advance,
    Trish

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Support Rank Math Support

    (@rankmathteam)

    Hello @trible,

    Thank you for contacting the support, and we regret the inconvenience caused.

    The option to exclude posts/pages/CPTs from the sitemaps is available under Rank Math > Sitemap Settings > General > Exclude Posts. Here’s a guide with more details: https://rankmath.com/kb/configure-sitemaps/#exclude-posts

    If you’re not seeing this option, please follow this guide to switch to the Advanced Mode and see if that helps: https://rankmath.com/kb/switch-from-easy-to-advanced-mode/

    In index sitemap of Rank Math is available on sitemap_index.xml. The sitemap.xml that you’re seeing would have been added by your previous SEO/Sitemap plugin.

    As you’re using Rank Math’s sitemaps, you can safely remove sitemap.xml from your Google Search Console account.

    Regarding the noindex tag, I checked the source of the page but was unable to replicate that tag. The page is properly set to “index”. Please have a look at this screencast for a quick reference: https://i.rankmath.com/Hoe0YV

    And here’s the screenshot of the Googlebot Smartphone test: https://i.rankmath.com/WT2wLz

    The page is also listed in the sitemaps properly: https://i.rankmath.com/rhnmOD

    As everything seems fine from our end, we suggest you follow the below steps and see if that helps:
    1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
    https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp

    2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/

    3. Clear your website’s cache and remove all the sitemaps from your Google Search Console account, and then submit only the main sitemap: /sitemap_index.xml

    Here’s a guide with more details: https://rankmath.com/kb/submit-sitemap-to-google/

    Further, give Google some time to crawl your website again and see if the issue gets fixed.

    Hope this helps.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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